$40 for Shantae on the PS5?!

Shantae’s the cute genie-girl star of Shantae, a popular video game franchise that first debuted in 2002 on the Game Boy Color. Despite being a fun technical tour-de-force on the platform, the game bombed. Hard. And thus the series would then languish; even the 2010 mini-sequel Risky’s Revenge went largely ignored.

But not anymore! The Shantae franchise has since seen a rather inexplicable resurgence, with new titles arriving regularly to fervent fanfare. Even the older titles once dismissed with indifference have been rereleased, and re-re-released, to enthusiastic sales.

But the question remains: Why the sudden boom in attention? What changed the community’s heart? It’s certainly not due to a sudden increase in quality of the games themselves, as they have always been good.

Well, the main reason has to do with Limited Run Games, a company that specializes in releasing digital and otherwise obscure titles in physical form. The idea, at least originally, was that LRG would “preserve” these ephemeral games by allowing collectors to buy them as physical, permanent copies (from a “limited” print run). What the company ultimately became, however, is a crass-profiteering machine that now prints, and reprints, anything it can gratuitously license—whether rare or not, old or not, digital or not, good or not—often in the ridiculous digits. It’s no longer about nobly preserving fading art; it’s about milking every last cent out of a well-meaning community and collector market that can’t always help itself. (LRG is releasing three more games this week? I must have them so my collection remains a full set, medication and rent-money be damned!)

Which brings us back to Shantae. The original GBC game was released twenty years ago. It has since received a Virtual Console port on the 3DS. And another digital port on the Switch. And a reprinted cartridge for the Game Boy Color that actually works on the original hardware. In other words, the game is plenty “preserved” now. Many times over, in fact.

And yet, guess what? Shantae is getting another release! Yep, the same old, slightly overrated, 8-bit game is now being re-re-re-re-released for the PS4 and PS5! For $35.00! Or $84.99 for those who just gotta have the Collector’s Edition! (And that’s before shipping and tax are included!)

So, how many consumers are actually going to spend forty bucks on a twenty-year-old 8-bit game for their PS5?

Sadly, probably a lot.